Smithiantha zebrina Kuntze

Horticultural & Botanical History

According to Paxton’s Magazine of Botany introduced to Britain in 1840, by M. Doncklaer of the Botanic Gardens of Ghent.  [REF].  ‘Whether in leaf or flower this is a plant of striking beauty.  Its leaves are soft with down, broad and beautifully stained with purple in the direction of the principal ribs, so as to have the banded appearance which has given rise to the name.  The flowers, scarcely less than an inch and a half long, hang gracefully at the end of long slender stalks, and are of the richest scarlet and yellow, variegated with crimson spots.’  [BR f.16/1842].  The Gardeners’ Chronicle was scarcely less enthusiastic in 1849: ‘A more useful plant than this for decorating the stove and conservatory during the autumn and winter months can hardly exist.’  [Gard. Chron. 1849].  In 1852 this journal commented: ‘The rich, green, velvety-like, and elegantly marked foliage of this lovely Gesnera renders it a pleasing and attractive object during all stages of its growth; and its fine spikes of deep red and orange blossoms are fully worthy of the fine foliage from which they issue.’  [Gard. Chron 1852].  BM t.3940/1842.  OFG f.73/1853.

History at Camden Park

Listed only in the 1857 catalogue [B.117/1857].

Notes

See also Smithiantha zebrina (Paxton) Kuntze var. geroltiana (Kunth & Bouche) Voss.